Controversy still surrounds marijuana growing facility

City Councilor Deborah Carr said she doesn’t regret being the lone holdout when the city approved a medical marijuana cultivation facility on Mozzone Boulevard.

“I just couldn’t vote for it and sleep at night,” Carr said.

Now that the City Council has voted 8-to-1 in favor of a special permit for the Greeneway Wellness Foundation medical marijuana growing facility, it appears owner and CEO John Greene is on his way to planting a crop that — with approval from the state’s Department of Public Health — he will sell at a Cambridge dispensary.

Daniel DaRosa, owner of B&D Construction in Taunton, said he anticipates Greene’s Taunton operation will be underway no later than July. In late 2013, DaRosa bought the industrial building at 30 Mozzone Boulevard for $2.3 million.

The building’s previous owner, nail manufacturer Independent Nail, left after more than 10 years when parent company W.H. Maze Co. consolidated operations.

The cultivation center will take up roughly one half of the 90,000-square-foot building; the other half is being leased to WeCare Organics for a materials recovery facility to recycle municipal waste.

The Greeneway plan calls for two-thirds of space to be used for growing and the rest for administrative duties and preparation of “alternative products” such as “edible marijuana infused products, tinctures and oils,” according to the non-profit’s developmental impact statement.

That impact statement refers to the Greeneway project as a “registered marijuana dispensary” that includes a cultivation area. But other official city documents previously referred to it only as a dispensary.

Greene initially applied to the DPH for a combined dispensary and cultivation facility in Taunton. However, the state, in issuing 20 “provisional licenses” to dispensary applicants, granted Greene the right to grow marijuana in Taunton on the condition that he sell the product in Cambridge.

Medical Marijuana of Massachusetts, which has been represented by former Congressman William Delahunt, has been granted a provisional license for a dispensary in East Taunton’s Liberty & Union Industrial Park, not far from where the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe wants to build a $500 million casino resort.

The City Council took care of the semantic mix-up when it voted to replace “dispensary” with “cultivation,” and that didn’t sit well with Carr.

She said City Planner Kevin Scanlon was “sitting at the sidelines” inserting the word “cultivation” for “dispensary” in his previous development-impact-review-board recommendation of compliance conditions.

“The whole thing was crazy,” Carr said.

But Carr said she’s mainly concerned about security, specifically the possibility of a break-in or a robbery of an armored vehicle picking up a supply of product for Cambridge.

She said, a concrete, cinder-block wall inside the building is all that will separate WeCare’s materials recovery business from Greeneway’s marijuana operation.

“What kind of security is that?” Carr said, adding that city police might be burdened by the presence of the pot-growing site.

DaRosa said Carr’s argument “has no merit.”

He said Taunton Police Chief Edward Walsh has met more than once with Greeneway’s security consultant and came away “extremely impressed” — so much so that the chief wrote a letter of support to the council and Mayor Thomas Hoye Jr.

On Saturday, Walsh said he found the security consultant to be “extremely competent” in his assessment of security measures for the pot project.

She stands firm in her belief that marijuana is a gateway to harder drugs, such as heroin, which since the beginning of 2014 has killed eight people in Taunton.

Carr also said she stands opposed to the state’s legalization of medical marijuana, calling it “a slippery slope” that someday could lead to legal, recreational use similar to Colorado.

DaRosa says Carr misses the point.

“The voters passed it for a reason: It’s medical marijuana,” he said, adding that people who stand to benefit from its potential for pain relief include victims of cancer, ALS and glaucoma.

Not unlike other medical marijuana competitors seeking local support, Greene has contributed money to local politicians.

According to the city’s clerk’s office, six Taunton city council candidates in 2013 accepted a total of $1,300 in campaign donations. They included John McCaul, Estelle Borges, David Pottier, Sherry Costa Hanlon and former councilor Alan Medeiros.

Donald Cleary initially accepted $200 but returned it to Greene. McCaul, who collected $500, received the single largest donation. Green also donated $400 to unopposed mayoral candidate Hoye, according to the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance.

Costa Hanlon has said she’s displeased with DPH for considering her letter of support for the Greeneway project in Taunton as a recommendation for Greeneway’s Cambridge dispensary; five other current and former councilors also submitted letters of recommendation to the DPH commissioner.

DaRosa said he expects WeCare’s materials recovery facility to be operational by May.

Green said Sunday he was pleased with the outcome of last week’s council meeting and looks forward to planting seeds by mid-summer. He expects it will take 120 days for his first crop, at which point he will begin selling the product at his Cambridge dispensary.

Neighbors on Mozzone Boulevard have 20 days to contest the permit approval. Greene said he doesn’t expect a problem and was heartened to know that one of them publicly supported his project.

As for a noticeable odor of marijuana, he said any smell from plants will be contained to the building. Air scrubbers, he said, will ensure that anyone passing by outside does not get a whiff of his high-quality pot plants. Greene said Chief Walsh was particularly appreciative of that fact.

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